Iran, Hungary set to sign deal for nuclear cooperation

TEHRAN – Iran and Hungary plan to sign an agreement on April 8 to expand nuclear cooperation, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi announced on Wednesday.

The agreement will be inked during a meeting between AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen.

Iranian and Hungarian authorities have made several reciprocal visits, including Salehi’s visit to Budapest in 2016.

Back in February 2016, Salehi said Iran has proposed a project with Hungary to design and develop a small nuclear reactor that could be sold across Asia and Africa and also built in the Islamic republic.

“One particular project that I suggested was to see if we can... together design a small reactor of 25 megawatts,” Salehi said. “It was received well and we hope that we can start this project, just on paper.”

The project “requires a lot of scientific work to come up with such a design, certainly a number of years of hard work. We want to see if we can do this,” he further said.

Following the lifting of international sanctions on Iran, Tehran has strived to fully utilize economic and scientific opportunities, including the pursuit of peaceful nuclear activities.

The Islamic Republic also enjoys close nuclear cooperation with Russia.

Last week, a Russian Foreign Ministry source told Sputnik that during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the two countries decided to sign a memorandum on the development of peaceful nuclear cooperation.

“We are talking about signing a document that defines a number of aspects of bilateral cooperation in the field of the purely peaceful use of nuclear energy, including in the context of the construction of the second and third units in Bushehr,” the sources added.